Although growing on the pie seems a more apt metaphor. Defending 15% fees on second-year subscription is pretty difficult. There's no marketing, very little fraud risk. It's really rent-seeking behaviour – which of course is the commercial point of the walled garden approach.
This is Apple exploiting a very lucrative market position, one that they did invest quite a lot of money in – and took quite a gamble – to create.
Definitely no counter-arguments from me. Because of Apple's pricing insanity, I've made sure I own zero of their devices, and I think every person capable of independent thought should do the same.
And this makes sense. They are counting the value paid per 1000 plays. If most of users in spotify are free, the average will be lower. Also, spotify has more plays than apple, so the final value paid might be higher.
This makes me wonder if $ per play is the right metric, versus $ per artist per platform. If you get paid less per play on Spotify, but get many more plays there would that still be a better deal?
> Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work.
And Apple's aim is to make more money off that more money. It's such an obviously, laughably stupid argument they're doing there.